Digital mapping giant HERE moves into asset tracking

HERE Technologies, a major digital mapping and location services provider, has unveiled a cloud-based platform designed to help companies track the movement of goods in real time, ZDNet reports. Known as HERE Tracking, the service will be available sometime in Q1 of next year.

HERE was spun out of Nokia two years ago, and is now owned by a consortium of German automakers including Audi, BMW, and Daimler. The company offers mapping, location, and routing data on roads, bridges, buildings, and traffic patterns. Many automakers — including Hyundai, Mitsubishi, and Jaguar LandRover — use this data to help power the navigation systems in their vehicles.

HERE Tracking can track goods indoors and outdoors, and will be integrated with other enterprise resource planning systems and supply chain touchpoints, like warehouse management systems. In addition, HERE Tracking includes application programming interfaces (APIs) companies can use to create geofences, analytics and visualization tools, as well as maps for indoor and outdoor environments with geocoding features to help companies name coordinates on a map. The company hopes HERE Tracking can be used in manufacturing, smart office, construction, transportation, and supply chain settings. HERE also announced that it has partnered with Concox and MediaTek to connect Concox telematics and wireless tracking devices running on MediaTek chipsets back to the cloud platform, and is looking to similarly partner with other tracking device and chipset manufacturers to embed HERE Tracking compatibility into their products.

This is HERE's first major effort to leverage its core mapping and location technologies to move into other markets. HERE Tracking is built on the company's Open Location Platform, which uses satellites, cameras, and cell towers to collect the data it sells and licenses to clients. The move is a natural extension of HERE's core business, and could prove lucrative, as Mobile Experts projects that the device cloud services market related to asset tracking applications will triple from $2.2 billion in 2016 to $7.5 billion by 2022.

More cloud platforms targeting asset tracking applications will provide a boon for companies looking to leverage the wide range of asset tracking technologies on the market. Blackberry recently scored a new partnership with Fleet Complete for its Radar IoT tracking solution for freight operators, while mapping giant TomTom offers an asset tracking service in partnership with Microsoft's Azure public cloud business.

The market also remains fragmented among various technologies for connecting tracking devices, including RFID, LTE, Bluetooth, and satellite technologies. This will likely lead to high uptake of cloud platforms that can aggregate data from multiple asset tracking solutions and providers, particularly as these platforms add new features and services to compete with one another.